During last week’s city council meeting, City Manager Marie L. Garrett talked about the future of Brookhaven’s parks and the city’s relationship with vendors.

Garrett said city staff would like to create a steering committee representing different neighborhoods in the community to look at what is necessary to improve the city’s parks and recreation programming.

“We will work hand-in-hand with end user providers — we will work and enter into contracts to provide services, what we expect from them, where their field will be, their practice time and terms of their season,” she said.

Garrett added it is not the city’s intention to hire its own gymnast or kickball leader, but that they do need control over those programs to best serve the community. By the end of the summer/early fall the goal for the city is to have its own program guide, said Garrett.

“But we’re going to contract out with the vendors themselves who do this every day and it’s not our intent to hire all of these individuals who will run or lead these programs themselves,” she said.

Brookhaven drivers will soon experience traffic improvements at the intersection of Ashford Dunwoody and Johnson Ferry roads as early as this summer.

Councilwoman Rebecca Chase Williams said Kimley-Horn & Associates completed a transportation study and came up with an immediate solution for a problem that could be implemented sooner rather than later.

“It’s really a combination of restriping and changing the signals a bit,” she said.

According to a news release, the design by the company shows additional through lanes, relocated traffic signals and new caution striping that is expected to shave considerable time off commutes for more than 300,000 motorists traveling through the intersection daily.

“The southbound lane of Ashford Dunwoody to Johnson Ferry roads intersection estimates a delay per car of 143 seconds and they [the company] thinks these improvements would reduce that to 43 seconds — so that’s a good minute per car,” said Williams.

The Georgia Department of Transportation has agreed to pay for the bulk of the project, which is about $290,000, with Brookhaven responsible for moving utility lines.

“We think it can be implemented sooner rather than later and be helpful to feed into the master plan,” said Williams. “So I’m quite optimistic and I think there will be some relief of that intersection.”

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